In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has mandated that all broadcast television stations enable digital broadcasts according to the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) by 2002, and by July 2005 all TV sets sold must be capable of receiving digital broadcasts. As such, digital television will be the primary mechanism for delivering television content within the next 3-5 years. Presently, over one thousand United States television stations have begun broadcasting high definition television (HDTV) in their markets. However, digital tuning involves new concepts such as physical, major and minor channels which will be initially unfamiliar to consumers and new hardware to receive digital broadcasts which will be used in addition to existing video sources such as analog television, digital cable, and video-on-demand. For example, an ATSC compatible tuner card enables a personal computer to receive ATSC television signals including HDTV programming.
Of paramount importance to consumers is locating programming utilizing the new standards which are available in their geographic area. While program listings are widely available for non-ATSC channels, programming and/or scheduling info is not readily available for ATSC channels. For example, while the FCC provides data for the ATSC channels (e.g., ownership, call signs, frequency of broadcast), the data does not include programming or scheduling information.
In one example, a computer user installs a new ATSC tuner card in a computer. The program guide on the computer needs a way to obtain and display programming and scheduling info for the ATSC channels to the user.
Accordingly, a system for matching ATSC channels to non-ATSC channels and generating geographic-specific guide data is desired to address one or more of these and other disadvantages.